Proposition 14 would smooth partisan edges

REDDING, CA - As a whole, the north state is conservative territory, unhappily attached to a state whose politics have become the emblem of over-the-top liberalism.

Thus we have a $20 billion deficit and a public pension system driving local budgets to collapse, and faced with these obviously and overwhelmingly pressing priorities, the Legislature this spring has passed a bill to ban smoking at state beaches, drafted legislation to restrict free parking, considered whether to bar landlords from advertising that only declawed cats are welcome as renters’ pets.

And then, periodically, the members stop to wonder why they have a 13 percent public approval rating.

California is a liberal state, to be sure, but the lawmakers we elect are out of touch even by that standard. Why? The political game favors extremists. Fortunately, there’s a change in the rules on the June ballot that could bring a dose of sanity to our politics. It’s called Proposition 14, the “Top Two Primary Act.”

The mechanics of Proposition 14 are simple. All candidates appear on the same primary ballot, and the voters’ two favorites — regardless of party — advance to the general election. Sound familiar? It should. This is precisely how we run county elections.

And while they’re not perfect, our local county governments are models of pragmatic problem-solving compared with Sacramento’s endless partisan soap opera.

How will Proposition 14 change the channel on that daytime drama? Consider how we run elections today, and how they’ll change.

Today, nearly all legislative districts are lopsidedly Republican or Democratic — to the point where the real action is in the party primaries in June, with the winners of those races confident of runaway victories in November.

But primaries, as a rule, are low-turnout affairs that mostly draw the party faithful. Thus a relative handful of gung-ho activists end up picking a district’s legislator. One fine example is Assembly Speaker John Perez, who garnered all of 4,905 votes in the 2008 Democratic primary, then went to take 85 percent of the vote against a token Republican in November. The bottom line: Less than 5 percent of registered voters ultimately chose the district’s assemblyman.

Closer to home and in the other party, state Senate hopefuls Rick Keene and Doug LaMalfa are both conservative purists whose campaigns aim squarely at the Republican base. Both former Assembly members, Keene and LaMalfa are products of the current system, which systematically punishes legislators open to pragmatic compromise. Just ask former Assemblyman Dick Dickerson, who ran afoul of his party over a handful of budget votes, and lost a GOP primary for the same seat in 2002. Even worse, many able but centrist-minded candidates never run in the first place, knowing they can’t reach the first rung of the political ladder in our highly partisan system.

A growing number of Californians are plainly fed up with that system. For two decades, the fastest-growing “party” is “Decline to State.” A full 20 percent of voters have dropped out of either major party, finding neither one is serving the public.

Proposition 14 won’t stop Berkeley from electing liberals or Burney from choosing conservatives. It does, however, promise a larger opening to candidates who don’t fit either side’s partisan mold, but instead appeal more to the sensible center. It will give independent voters the right to participate in elections as full citizens. It offers the hope of a more pragmatic approach to solving California’s massive problems. And it definitely deserves a “yes” vote.